


He Couldn't See Me, the Sun Was in His Eyes

by cm (mumblemutter)



Series: Fever [1]
Category: Heroes - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe, Bloodplay, Breathplay, Incest, Knifeplay, M/M, Watersports
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-07
Updated: 2010-03-07
Packaged: 2017-10-07 18:59:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/68184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mumblemutter/pseuds/cm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Peter is special. Nathan knows this. A fairytale AU (in a way).</p>
            </blockquote>





	He Couldn't See Me, the Sun Was in His Eyes

**Author's Note:**

> Loosely based on the video for Fever Ray's [When I Grow Up](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4F-CpE73o2M&), with apologies to Fever Ray.

  
_When I grow up, I want to be a forester  
Run through the moss on high heels  
That's what I'll do, throwing out a boomerang  
Waiting for it to come back to me_   


 

They drive. Mostly Nathan drives, and Peter slouches with his booted feet wedged against the edge of the dashboard or his head in Nathan's lap, sunglasses permanently affixed on his face. It's been weeks now, or months, Nathan lost track of time a while ago. It's immaterial at this point, really.

At the gas station Peter piles up a mountain of sweets and chocolates. He likes Twinkies, and Oreos, and those disgusting pink things that probably taste exactly as bad as they look. "Real food, Pete," Nathan says disapprovingly, because Peter fills himself up with junk and then he takes a few bites of the burger that he orders at whichever crappy diner they can find and declares himself done. Not that the food they find on the road is much better, but at the very least it's hot and is made up of more than processed sugar.

The sugar drives Peter even more loopy than he usually is, and this time the cashier at the counter frowns disapprovingly at them both as Peter tries on a huge pair of sunglasses with a hideous pink frame and says, "Look, Nathan. That's kind of hot right, you gotta admit."

"My brother," Nathan says pointedly, and the girl looks less offended, but only slightly. "We'll take those glasses. And all of," he idly picks up a packet that's the most godawful shade of purple, then sets it down again. "These. Please, and thank you."

-

Back when they figured they still had a chance, or when Nathan did, Peter would read bits of Dad's letters to Mom out loud:

_Dear Angela,_

_Today I thought of you, so I made it snow. For at least a half-hour, and then I had to stop because the trees were starting to die due to the cold. The leaves don't talk to me anymore. Give my love to the boys._

_\- Arthur_

"They're not love letters," Peter told him, "Not a single one."

"Yeah well, it seems pretty fucking romantic to me. Stop doing that, it's private."

"If Ma hadn't wanted us to read them, she wouldn't have given them to you, now would she," Peter said, and scowled. He took off his sunglasses and squinted briefly as his eyes adjusted to the sudden brightness. "I think of you as winter as well, but the end of it, not the beginning or middle."

"Whatever, man." Nathan winced even as the words stumbled from his mouth. Too much time spent in this car, and he was starting to sound like Peter. Twenty-eight and regressing to sixteen, and weren't they supposed to work the other way around. "I'm melting snow and slush piles, just great," he concluded finally, and hissed from between his teeth.

"No, Nathan," Peter said, all seriousness. "You're the promise of spring."

-

Most of the time, they don't even pretend anymore. He pushes Peter up against walls, drags him into the backseat of the car, locks them both up for days in shitty motel room after shitty motel room, only emerging, when necessary, for food or beer. Nathan always worries, whenever he leaves, that when he returns Peter will be gone and Nathan will have to start looking for him, but no, Peter is almost always exactly where Nathan left him, arms and legs spread out on the bed, sheets pooled around his feet. "Did you get me my M&amp;Ms," he says this time, raising himself up on his elbows and smiling sleepily at Nathan.

Nathan sets the beer down on the nightstand and tosses the brightly colored packet in his direction. "M&amp;Ms, for your highness, as he wishes."

"Oh," Peter says, mouth rounding over the O like a pretty pink bow, "I wanted the peanuts. These are plain." Disappointed in his way.

"Great," Nathan says, irritated suddenly. "How the fuck am I supposed to know what kind of fucking M&amp;Ms you wanted. You should have been more clear, do I look psychic to you?"

Peter only smiles though, sweetly. "You should have just asked. But it's okay, I can eat these." He falls onto his back and tears open the packet carelessly, and a rainbow of candy-coated chocolates rains down onto his face and chest. Peter picks up one and offers it to Nathan. Nathan takes it, but only so he can suck Peter's fingers into his mouth, suck them until they're wet and sticky and tinged faintly with red dye. Nathan blinks slowly, and Peter blinks in response, his eyes huge, almost owlish in the dim light.

Nathan pulls their clothes off roughly, and Peter tries to help but he usually just wastes more time so Nathan swats his hands away, holds one finger up impatiently until he settles. Nathan's only half-hard by the time he's done, and Peter gets on his knees, pushes Nathan back until he's on his elbows, watching lazily as Peter's mouth slides, hot and steady, over his cock.

"Pete," Nathan says, and he starts when fingers press into him, sudden and invasive. Peter holds him down easily as he shudders and jerks, and after a while Nathan relaxes, rocks into Peter's mouth. He could come just like this, but the night's young yet and he hasn't fucked Peter yet the way he needs to, slow and deep, until Peter makes those startled little bird noises he does, and the foundation of the world starts to shake around them both.

"Stay with me," Nathan tells him afterwards, when they finally get around to it, whispers into Peter's ear until he nods, almost imperceptibly, sweat plastering his hair to his forehead and his eyes squeezed shut.

Nathan's hands are on Peter's chest, pushing him down, holding him still as he spasms and sobs, the orgasm making him groan. "I love you," he says, and Nathan bites down on his shoulder, hard enough that it almost breaks the skin. He stops before he can come, straddles Peter's ribs, knees sinking down into the too soft mattress. Peter's hands flutter, settle loosely on Nathan's thighs as Nathan jerks himself off, quick and desperate, until he's almost there, then he raises himself up and finishes messily on Peter's face.

They leave mattresses sticky with come and drying sweat and the crushed remnants of half eaten candy, but Peter drops extra money and whatever candy's left on the nightstand for the maid. Nathan grabs him by the wrist and drags him along as he lingers, because Peter's always had a hard time letting go of places, even ones likes these.

-

Nathan calls home sometimes, just to hear Heidi's voice. He will listen to her cheerful "Hello," and then say nothing, strain to hear Monty's toddler babbling or Simon's cooing or crying in the background, until she gets tired of the silence and hangs up. Once, she says, "Nathan?" and he's so stunned he almost answers, but he catches himself just in time, exhales quietly instead. He tells himself that he misses them, that he calls because he misses his life, but the truth is he calls only because he feels guilty. Only because as the time passes by he finds himself forgetting their faces, and sometimes even their names.

_I have two sons. Their names are Monty and Simon_, he scribbles once on a blank card, and tosses it out the car window. _I will remember who they are_, on another one, watching as the wind catches it and blows it behind them, forever lost. Committing it to memory, to the road.

_I wish I knew who I was without Peter_, he writes on the final card, and then he throws the marker away as well.

"You know that's littering," Peter says, and Nathan laughs and stretches, muscles aching from sitting for so long. "You don't have to love them you know," he continues, and Nathan stills, mid-stretch.

"What?"

"You don't have to love them. There's nothing you need to be forgiven for." He takes Nathan's hand in his, turns his wrist so he can kiss the vein on the inside of it. Nathan feels weak and rudderless, tethered to this place by nothing more than the softness of Peter's lips on his skin.

He doesn't pull away, and he doesn't call home anymore.

-

Nathan had a map laid out on the hood of the car - at some point he'd ditched the Benz for a '69 Charger, but kept his suits - trying to figure out how they were going to get to Los Angeles of all places, because Peter had decided he wanted to go. Nature boy in the most unnatural place on earth, it was oddly fitting.

Peter of course was no help whatsoever, he sat on the edge of the driver's side of the hood, swinging his legs and tilting his head back to make the clouds shape themselves into bunny rabbits or castles or wolves being chased by little red riding hood. He had a beer that he was five years too young to drink in one hand, the other one was between his knees, tapping rhythmically on the metal, a little Peter melody, all his own. "I made it rain," he told Nathan conversationally, "For that little girl we met while we were getting ice-cream at that gas station. She told me she loved it when it rained. She seemed sweet. I really liked her."

"That's because you both have the same mental age." He folded the map back shut and said, "Okay, I think I know how to get there. It's only a three day drive. Wonderful." Peter didn't respond, but when Nathan passed him by to get into the car, he put his hand out and snagged one of the lapels on his suit, forcefully enough that Nathan had to stop, turn back. "What," he said, and Peter smiled, a wholly secret smile. Nathan just raised his eyebrows at him, and when Peter tugged him gently forward he just went, in a daze somehow, and ended up standing between Peter's open knees, his feet bumped up against the front wheel of the car.

"I like it when you're tanned," Peter said, and he traced the line of Nathan's jaw with the still cold lip of the beer bottle. Nathan didn't move when he followed it with his mouth, tongue tracing wetly over cooling skin, but when Peter reached his mouth Nathan shoved him back, grabbed both his shoulders and held him there, so he couldn't move. Couldn't do what his faintly knowing smile said he was planning to. Peter set the bottle carefully down on the hood and said, "Nathan, please."

In the end, Nathan kissed him because he was hot, and he was angry, and he had a three day drive to look forward to all on a whim, and because Peter wanted him to. Because Peter's eyes were big and hopeful and he moaned when Nathan buried his fingers in his hair and tugged hard, and he hooked one leg around Nathan's waist to pull him closer still, until they were touching everywhere they could. Nathan sucked Peter's tongue into his mouth, and he responded by snapping his hands to Nathan's waist, pulling urgently at his pants. Nathan batted them away, grabbed both wrists and twisted them behind Peter's back, held them there until he whimpered. "Is this what you want, Pete," he said, but Peter only nodded his head defiantly, and kissed him again.

Nathan let go of Peter's arms then and fell to his knees. Belt and buttons, he tugged fiercely and Peter lifted himself up enough so Nathan could slide his jeans and briefs down to below his knee. Peter's skin was too white and he was too thin, but anticipation and need curled in Nathan's belly nonetheless. He pressed his face to the inside of Peter's thigh and kissed him gently, chastely.

Peter bucked unexpectedly, and hissed, and when Nathan looked up his head was hanging low and his face was red, dark hair like a wave over his eyes. He wouldn't last long, and he didn't, not when Nathan slid his mouth over his cock, just the hint of teeth and as deep as he could, and Peter said, "Oh god Nathan I love you," and he came, desperate and pulsing, right into the back of Nathan's throat, before collapsing bonelessly onto the hood. Nathan followed him up, wrapped a hand around the back of his neck and kissed him deep. "Did you swallow," Peter asked, and he sounded amazed, and Nathan laughed and kissed him again.

"I want you to fuck me," Peter said eventually, his hand finding the shape of Nathan's dick through his pants. Nathan was already hard and Peter's touch was tentative but insistent, and Nathan grabbed his wrist to still him, but he didn't push his fingers away. "You should, I really want you to," Peter continued, his voice breathy, sweet with honest desire. Which was the problem with Peter, essentially. Everything he wanted, everything that felt good, he saw no reason not to indulge in. Even this. Ma's fault, Nathan thought dizzily. She never did raise him right.

"Yeah, well. You can't always get what you want, Pete," Nathan said, and disengaged himself, sharply, from Peter's embrace. His dick was still hard, and his head was spinning with need, and he could see himself suddenly, taking Peter right here and right now, sun beating down on them both as they messed up the spit-shiny hood of the car, as he opened Peter up and made him scream until the ground shuddered and flames consumed all that they were.

He only pushed himself off though and got back into the car, gunned the engine until Peter slid into the passenger seat, eyes hidden behind sunglasses once more.

-

Ma used to bend down and whisper into Nathan's ear, "Your brother's sick, Nathan," her hands smoothing over Nathan's hair. "It's okay, he has you. When I'm gone, he'll have you. You'll take care of him, won't you." Ma was always crying then.

When his parents had first brought Peter home from the hospital, he'd been almost preternaturally silent, and if Ma hadn't been constantly fussing over him, Nathan might have been able to ignore his existence altogether. He liked to go into the nursery though, late nights when everyone else was asleep, and hug Peter to his chest and listen to his baby-heartbeat, the almost inaudible gurgling noises he made as he slept.

Once though, he'd walked in and found Pa standing over the crib, strange expression on his face. "Your brother," Pa said, and the way he said it made Nathan want to shrink back against the wall, grab Peter and run as far away as he could, even though it was only _Pa_. "He's special, you understand?" Nathan shook his head no, of course he didn't, until Peter turned three and by then Pa was long gone and Nathan couldn't ask him how he'd known.

About Peter's dreams and Peter's endless screaming at the monsters that only he could see, and how the earth bloomed wherever he touched, or turned to dust. How his distress made it rain or snow or even hail sometimes, and even fire would dance when he beckoned. The garden was a riot of color or a barren wasteland regardless of the weather, entirely dependent on how happy Peter happened to be.

Everyone marveled at first, but after a while they stopped marveling and started whispering. _That boy,_ they said. _That's the one. The freak._ And Nathan could feel their fear. More importantly, Nathan could feel their burgeoning hate. They kept moving, and it got better after a while, and so Nathan went to college, went to law school and got the job, the wife, the two point five kids, and pretended he had a life that wasn't about Peter.

Peter was sixteen when Ma called him and said, "Please come. Your brother - you have to see what he did."

-

When Nathan dreams, it's of flying through the desert at night, all the stars a brilliant map and as near as if he could touch them. He dreams of flying, and he dreams of crashing down onto hard mud, his insides splashing, red and black, seeping into the cracks in the mud. He dreams of Peter walking up and sitting down cross legged next to the broken pieces and painstakingly putting him back together again, until he's whole once more, but entirely different. Peter always was the one with the imagination.

This isn't a dream, it's memory. He wakes up with tears on his face and Peter's fingers over his cheeks, whispering soothing words into his mouth. Tales of devotion and love, of the earth bursting open and swallowing them both whole, of being reborn out of water and faith.

Peter is a magician, and Nathan is his finest trick, the one that the world's convinced is real. His hands are on Nathan's cock, and Nathan watches distantly as it hardens under Peter's touch, and Peter's open smile: this is real magic, right here. "Gonna make you come, Nathan," Peter sing-songs, and Nathan kisses him then, mostly to shut him the fuck up. His fingers are delicate and expert, teasing. Thumb over the head and then under, Nathan shivers involuntarily and jerks his hips, and comes, just like his brother tells him to.

Peter fucks him later, restrains Nathan's wrists with his own tie, looped around the headboard of the bed. Nathan protests, but mildly, and he closes his eyes when Peter tells him to, slides his fingers down Nathan's eyelids. There's an infinite gentleness to Peter when he fucks Nathan, like Nathan is made of glass, but Nathan's muscles strain, and eventually he tries to break his hands loose, and Peter licks down the side of his throat, mumbles soothingly, "Shh, Nathan. It will be allright," until Nathan stops gasping and settles, lets Peter tell him nonsense words and stories as the ache starts building once more, and again.

When Nathan dreams, he dreams of a town razed to the ground because a teenager got angry, and then afraid. He dreams of burnt faces and charred bodies and the stink of burning flesh, under his skin. Ma said, in the wreckage of their own house, Peter on his knees and his face shadowed by his hair, untouched and untouchable and inexplicably drenched in water, "It's not your fault, Nathan." And what she meant was: You should have been there. This is your responsibility.

"What do you want me to do," Nathan said.

Ma hugged herself, as if expecting an assault, and said quietly, "Find your father."

"Dad - but he's dead. Oh."

Of course she'd lied to him, that was what she did, and he was surprised at how betrayed he felt, how angry. "You adored your father, Nathan. I couldn't bear to tell you the truth," she said, and she pressed a stack of open envelopes into his hands. Letters, he realized. Postmarked throughout the years, in Dad's distinct scrawl. "I don't know where he is right now, I haven't received a letter in over four years, but perhaps these will help." Her fingers caressing his jaw, and he stepped away, deliberately, for the first time, and she flinched.

"I don't want to talk about it," Peter said, the first day, suddenly, sullenly, nothing more than a kid, lashing out because a girl dumped him, or he got bullied at school, or he was being punished for something that wasn't his fault.

Nathan said, "We don't ever have to talk about it," and drove.

It took a while for Nathan to get it. These weren't his dreams, they were Peter's. All the death and the horror and the destruction, and underneath it all, a darkly furious curl of immeasurable power. The earth trembles under Peter's feet because he understands it, he knows all its secrets and he desperately wants to see it upturned, reshaped into an image of his own liking. Peter whispers sometimes into Nathan's ears, when they're fucking, when Peter's thighs are splayed wide open and Nathan is deep inside him, rocking and thinking of nothing but friction and heat and everything crashing down, he will whisper, "You're mine, Nathan. Mine and no-one else's. I earned you."

Peter always did love Nathan a little more than was healthy.

-

Once, he called Ma, asked her the question he'd been dying to ask all this time but was never quite ready to hear the answer, not just yet: "Why'd he leave, Ma."

Ma said, "Because I would have killed him if he hadn't," and hung up.

-

Peter tastes like chocolate and processed sugar and mother nature, wild and untamed and utterly mad, and Nathan can never get enough of him. They fuck in the back seat of the car, off dirt roads, muscles straining from trying to balance themselves in the enclosed space. Nathan's too old for this shit, he likes to tell Peter exactly that, but Peter hums and ignores him and Nathan digs his fingers into the slightly soft flesh of Peter's belly, half-moon purpled crescents that almost break the skin.

Nathan kisses the marks until they fade away, his lips open and wet over salty skin. He can barely breathe, the windows are rolled up and foggy and there's sweat in his eyes and rolling down the back of his neck, but that's okay. The sweat is good. So is spit, and making Peter come, and then he can arrange Peter whichever way he wants to and not bother with lube, just slide in, slick and just skittering on the edge of too dry, so that Peter will hiss and instinctively jerk away, and Nathan has to cover his mouth with his palm, hold him until he stops bucking.

Eventually Peter opens wide enough that Nathan can find a rhythm that will work for the both of them, but he keeps his hand over Peter's mouth because he's clamped down on the soft pad of flesh beneath his thumb, blood breaking the delicate skin and pain radiating up Nathan's arm, making everything spin headily. Maybe Peter's choking, fighting to breathe, but Nathan doesn't care. His brother is perfect like this, and nothing else feels like this. Nothing else will ever feel like this.

Nathan sits up afterwards, and Peter smiles, mouth dark red with drying blood. "Roll down the window," he says, but Nathan shakes his head. He takes a battered packet from his discarded coat jacket and lights a cigarette instead, and Peter grimaces. "Fuck, I wish you'd stop doing that."

"If wishes were horses," Nathan says, but when Peter shoots him the stink-eye he gives in and rolls the window down. The night air is cool against his skin, cooler where the sweat and come almost immediately starts to dry.

-

That first night, they'd gotten as far away as they could before exhaustion hit Nathan, and he pulled into the first motel that they saw. The only room left was the honeymoon suite, but Nathan took it anyway. He led Peter into the bathroom and snapped his fingers in front of his eyes. "Hey, hey. Are you good? I need you to get yourself cleaned up okay? Can you do that?"

Peter nodded blankly, and Nathan sighed, but then he said hesitantly, "Yeah. Okay, Nathan. Okay."

"I'll be right outside if you need me." Nathan brushed Peter's hair out of his eyes, forgetting briefly how much the length annoyed him. "You just holler, you understand?" He ended up getting a pack of cigarettes from the vending machine outside, driven by a craving he hadn't felt in a while. Years, even, but it felt as if he'd never stopped, old habits and all. Nathan tilted his head back as he exhaled, watched the full moon as it hung in the sky, pale and swollen.

When he finally went back in Peter was just coming out of the shower, towel hung loosely around his waist. He looked impossibly young and far too thin, and he fidgeted nervously and said, "My clothes are dirty."

"Yeah, I'll see about getting them laundered for you. Then maybe we can buy you some new ones." Everything Peter owned except for what was on his back was ashes now, Nathan probably should have thought ahead. But then he didn't figure he'd be here right now, surrounded by gaudy pink and red furnishings and a bed with a fucking mirror on the top. "You just go to bed, Pete." He lowered his voice the way he did when they were younger and Peter was constantly terrified and needed to be soothed, averted his eyes when Peter slid in under the covers, wrapping them securely around his frame.

Nathan took the surprisingly uncomfortable love seat by the window, and only fell asleep when Peter's breathing turned slow and steady. He was still thinking about work that night before he slept, about his caseload and who'd cover for him at the office, and what he would tell Heidi about his absence, and Monty's christening which he would probably miss, and how he'd explain that as well. He still thought he'd get a chance to go back, and that nothing would have to change.

-

He likes to lay Peter out in barren fields, where he can close his eyes and hear the earth whisper, and when he opens them again grass and flowers bloom around them both, heady and tall, and if he picked Peter up now there'd be a Peter shaped mark in the ground where nothing grows. Sometimes Nathan wonders if trees would break out, thick, veiny trunks reaching up endlessly into the night sky, if they just stayed long enough. Jack and the beanstalk. Peter's the conjurer of beans. "Do it," Peter says, softly pleading, and the knife is in Nathan's hands as if it had always been there, the handle cool and curved against his palm.

They'd bought it at a speciality store somewhere near Nebraska, Peter wandering around in a daze, carelessly touching the sharp-edged pieces on display until Nathan said, "Peter, heel," and then Peter had blinked wide eyes at him, almost comical in their surprise.

He drifted over to Nathan's side though, as Nathan weighed one after another in his palm until one felt right. Porcelain and steel handle and a slightly curved blade; the proprietor said quietly, "That's a good choice. It's a work of art," and her gaze flicked over to Peter and then back to Nathan again, and she nodded her head sharply. "I'll ring you up."

She wasn't wrong about the blade, it cuts through Peter's skin like butter, blood welling almost black under the dim light of the moon. Peter hisses as Nathan traces a pattern on his chest, careful not to touch older wounds that were starting to heal. Nathan's trembling, almost shivering, but he keeps the knife steady. He always keeps the knife steady. Peter's cock is hard, stiff against his belly, and Nathan's own desire is a pit at the base of his spine, but it's not time for this, not yet. Now it's the sacrifice.

"The earth demands blood, Nathan," Peter said, the first time, and the way he said it, it made total and utter sense. He presses the tip of the blade in deeper now, draws a line on each side of Peter's ribs. The blood blooms violently and slides down his skin, disappears into the rich brown soil. Nathan gives in then, buries his face in Peter's crotch, overwhelmed by lust and love and want, and the hot hard slide of Peter's cock between his teeth. "She loves us, Nathan," he can hear Peter saying, but dimly, as if though a glass wall. "We are her favorite children, and she will always keep us safe." When Peter comes, sighing fitfully, Nathan holds it under his tongue, crawls up Peter's body and grips his jaw so he can force it open, keep him still. He hovers over Peter, lets spit and come drip into Peter's mouth. Some of it glistens on Peter's lips and teeth before Nathan kisses him, slow and sweet.

He's too hard, and so he gets back on his knees and tries to regulate his breathing, dick held loosely in his hand. He looks up into the night sky instead of directly at Peter, because that only makes him want to bear down and tear his insides apart, and it's not time for that, not yet. Peter will wait for this, he won't ask and he won't get impatient, and eventually the blood thumping in Nathan's ears slows down to a manageable level, and he lets go. The stream of piss is slow at first, and then faster, and Peter moans and arches up into it as it splashes onto him, pale gold mixing in with the blood, salving his wounds. Peter says that this, like blood, is a gift, returning to the earth, giving it back what it craves, what it needs. Nathan's not so sure about that, but this is what power feels like, right here and right now, with Peter whimpering under him and opening his mouth, licking his lips to catch drops as they fall.

-

The waitress is blond and almost beautiful, the hard set of her face making her come off as older than she probably is; more likely closer to Peter's age than Nathan's own. Slight worry lines around her mouth and tired blue eyes, she smiles distantly at them both and asks, in a faint unidentifiable drawl, "What will it be, sweethearts?"

"How's your steak - no, nevermind, I'll just get a caesar salad. My brother here will have the double bacon cheeseburger with the works." Nathan smiles encouragingly at her, but he's afraid it's all teeth and no cheer.

She doesn't react though, only says, "Anything to drink?"

"Coffee and a chocolate milkshake."

"Coming right up." She starts gathering up the menus, and when Peter grabs her wrists she stills instead of jerking away.

Nathan feels a muscle in his jaw start to twitch. He says warningly, "Peter," but Peter's only smiling up at her, his face young and soft and achingly lovely. The girl, her nametag says _Niki_, Niki stares as if transfixed, pink mouth slightly open and wet. "Sorry, my brother's -"

"What? Oh." She snaps out of it and blinks, trembles a little on her feet. "I'll just see to your order now," she says, but it's Nathan, surprisingly, that she says that to, and the smile she offers him is wan but sincere.

"I think she likes you," Peter tells him, watching her retreat to the safety of the counter, gaze fixed and focused.

"Your hair's too long," Nathan says, and brushes Peter's bangs out of his forehead. "We should get it cut."

"I like her," Peter says dreamily. "She's pretty."

Nathan ignores him until the food comes, Niki smiles once again at Nathan but it fades slightly when Peter thanks her and tries to catch her eye. She still lingers too long, her fingers tapping nervously on the edge of the vinyl table before she leaves. Nathan plays with limp pieces of lettuce and overcooked chicken, until finally he gives up and pulls Peter's half eaten burger towards him. Peter protests, but he won't finish it anyway; Peter's incapable of finishing anything but a Mars bar. "Drink your milkshake," he says, and pushes the glass at him. Peter pokes at it with the straw, but his attention is elsewhere: Niki, hovering behind the counter, her pale face striking, even under the cheap fluorescent lights.

Peter, at heart, is a collector of things that are bright and beautiful and broken. He collects Niki for a while; she sleeps snuggled up in the backseat of the car and when Peter drives, Nathan chats idly with her, about her fiancé, who's a "good guy" which Nathan reads as "career criminal", and her plans for the future which include community college, or most likely just them packing up and heading to Vegas at some point after they get married. She frowns though, face changing almost imperceptibly to something else entirely, when Nathan asks the obvious question: _why are you here if you have someone to go home to_, and the air is thick with uneasiness until Peter says, "Leave her alone, Nathan. She'll leave when she's ready."

"Oh great, the children are mutinying," Nathan snaps, but neither of them reply, and eventually Nathan just gives up, goes back to casual conversations about the state of the economy, the weather and how Nathan not-so-secretly hates American cars. It's nice to have someone to converse with that isn't Peter, and his particular brand of inane, incessant crazy.

When Nathan drives Peter crawls into the backseat and they fuck, Niki's long legs wrapped around Peter's waist and filling up the car with the sounds of her moans. His dark hair and pale skin against her lanky blondness, and Nathan will watch, idly, in the rear view mirror, mildly interested but not enough to want to do anything about it.

Niki fades away after a while, like they all do, and it's just the two of them once more, like it always is. Like it always will be.

-

They found Dad, of all places, at the backwoods of the Mississippi delta, in an old colonial house with trees surrounding it like a fortress. Or rather, Dad found them, days after Nathan had finally given up, when he called Ma just to see how she was doing, and she said, voice strained and pale, "Your father wants to see you, Nathan. He told me to tell you where to go." Peter was moody the entire day, the entire drive there, huddled up in the the corner of the car as if he was wishing himself smaller. It had been relentlessly sunny all week, but today the clouds chased them wherever they went, bruised and sullen.

"What," Nathan snapped finally, because he couldn't take the silence any more.

"I don't see why we have to -"

"Again, Pete. We're going through this again?" He didn't want to, because it always ended badly, but he did it anyway. "You're sick. Dad will make you better. Then we can go back to at least pretending we can lead normal lives. I would like some semblance of a life, Pete. Just some."

Peter sighed, but then he said, finally, in the tone of voice he'd only used when he was little and the monsters got to be too much to bear, "I'm scared, Nathan."

"He's our father, Pete. I know you were too young to remember him, but there's no reason to be afraid."

"That's not why I'm afraid," Peter replied quietly, and he shook his head and refused to speak the rest of the way.

In the end: The gun was a precaution, Arthur was their father, whatever he had done, no matter that he'd abandoned them, and Nathan had no intention of using it except that Peter was trembling behind him, his fists clenched into the back of Nathan's jacket and his breath hollowed and panicked on the nape of Nathan's neck. "Hello, Nathan," Arthur said, but his gaze was entirely fixed on Peter, his eyes dark and gleaming. Nathan didn't remember this person, but then again memory was a tricky thing and Angela always said that Nathan was fond of coloring the past the way he saw it. "Your brother takes after you in that way," she would say fondly. "I was always unfortunate in that my memories were always crystal clear."

"Hello, father," Nathan replied, and the gun felt clammy in his hand, but strangely reassuring. "It's been a while. Glad to see you're - alive."

Arthur didn't look all that well. The suit he was wearing hung loosely on him and his face was drawn and haggard, far too many lines on them for a man of his age. "I'm sorry for the lies, son. They were necessary at the time. But you're here now, and just in time, too." He spread his arms out and stepped forward, and Peter stepped back, pulling Nathan with him.

Nathan stumbled on his feet, but he steadied himself in time to catch Peter's wrist as he turned to flee. "Enough, Pete," he said. "Enough. No more games, no more of this foolishness. This ends."

Peter stilled, and Nathan hadn't even paid attention to any of the background noise, the trees rustling in the wind, the birds chattering to each other, the sound of claws on the ground or against rough bark, until it all, suddenly, stopped. Then it was just Peter's face, soft and imploring, and Nathan's own harsh breathing, and Arthur, who said, quiet as a snake, "Come here, Peter. Give your father a hug."

Nathan shot him, right between the eyes.

-

Nathan still remembers Dad more fondly than he probably deserved, but back then he'd grown up thinking that his life would be normal. That it would exist without a Peter in it. They're in a bigger town today, row of identical houses with leaf-filled swimming pools, mournful over the death of summer. Nathan used to spend hours in the pool at home, getting strong and tanned, innocently flirting with the girl that grew up next door. Never imagining once that he'd end up behind glass doors watching his brother teeter on the edge of a diving board, bending water to his will. Peter's feet and hands are akimbo, dancing stiffly to the beat of a music only he can hear, and the water rises high and splashes back down again in strange patterns that follow his movement.

Eventually Nathan slides the door open and emerges, setting his glass carefully down on the nearest deck chair. Peter's on his hands and knees now, staring intently into the water. If Nathan doesn't catch him he might topple in, and Peter can't swim, so he takes off his shoes and socks and clambers onto the board, wincing at the cold aluminum beneath his feet.

"Hey Pete," he says, and he sits and straddles the board, hands pressed on the curve of Peter's back.

"Hey Nathan," Peter says blankly. "Did you see. Did you see?"

"Yeah, I saw. Getting better." Water is Peter's weak spot. It won't listen, he tells Nathan. Sometimes, it just won't listen. Not like the earth. Water has its own will and it wants to do what it wants to do. Nathan puts his forehead on the hollow between Peter's shoulderblades, rests there for a while. He's tired, today. Drained of everything and nostalgic for a life that once was, that never will be again. "We should go," he says eventually, but he doesn't move, and neither does Peter, not for a while at least.

When they go back into the house, Peter raids the kitchen for chocolates, and more importantly, the fridge for ice cream, and cake. He plops a container of vanilla onto the table and gleefully tears off the lid. Nathan hands him a spoon, sits and smokes and refuses to accept even a spoonful. Peter's capable of finishing it all without him, anyway. "I think," Peter says, at one point, "That the only ice-cream flavor worth eating is vanilla."

"I thought you liked Rocky Road best."

Peter frowns. "When did I ever say that."

"I don't know, Pete. Just about a million times, that's what I've heard you say. What you insist that I buy for you even though I keep telling you not to eat it in the car because your sticky fingers end up dirtying it everywhere."

"Oh," Peter says, then shrugs. "Well, I like vanilla now. You don't have to be such an asshole about it. But that's like asking you not to breathe I guess." Nathan shoots him a filthy look, and Peter tosses the spoon carelessly into the sink, says, "We should go upstairs. I bet they have a nice bed." Nathan lets Peter lead him by the hand, into the master bedroom of this couple that's away, for the night at least. He slams Peter into the wall, kisses him hard, and then walks him to the bed until he falls, ungainly, onto his back. He scrambles up though, drags Nathan on top of him by the collar of his shirt. Mouth cold and ice-cream flavored, Nathan kisses him until they're both shaking with need, and the couple have nice sheets, Nathan thinks dimly, soft pale pink silk, and he silently apologizes to them before he grabs Peter's arms and shoves him until he's turned over onto his front.

Peter tries to raise himself up on his elbows, but Nathan grips him tightly by the scruff of his neck, hard enough that there'll be a bruise there tomorrow, a Nathan shaped mark on Peter's delicate skin. Peter shivers, but does nothing as Nathan squeezes even tighter, then drops his entire body weight on top of Peter's slight frame.

They fuck without lube again tonight, just spit and sweat and Peter's tiny hitching noises as he struggles to breathe, and when it's over and Nathan's loose-limbed and heavily sated, he finally lets his grip lighten, but he leaves his hand there, and Peter exhales quietly, and then coughs, the sound raw and pained in the stillness of the room. "I love you," Nathan whispers, and he kisses the shell of Peter's ear.

At dawn, Nathan wakes up and Peter's sitting cross-legged on the bed, silently watching him. "What," Nathan says sleepily. He yawns and stretches, thinks wearily of the road ahead of them. This early, he almost looks forward to it. The cheerful normalcy of the room, the sun delicately peeking in through the blinds, is almost unbearable. "What," he says again, because Peter's still only staring.

"Do you regret it," Peter asks, so quiet but crystal clear. "You could have had all this back," and he waves his hand around, encompassing the room, the house, the picket fence. "What you wanted all along."

"Is that what you wanted?"

"No, I -" He pauses to scoot down and slide back under the sheets, wraps himself around Nathan's body, hand over Nathan's heart. "I didn't tell you. I would have died. I -"

Nathan pulls him closer still, says, "I know."

Summer turns to autumn turns to winter turns to spring. They drive, keep driving.

 

_Waiting for him to catch me_

 

 

  
  
  
| 

**Fever Ray** \- [When I Grow Up](http://six-by-nine.org/lj/Fever Ray - When I Grow Up.mp3) | _i rest for a minute or two, then back on my feet to call for you_

**Radiohead** \- [Climbing Up The Walls](http://six-by-nine.org/lj/Radiohead - Climbing up the Walls.mp3) | _you know we're friends till we die_

**Crowded House** \- [Private Universe](http://six-by-nine.org/lj/Crowded House - Private Universe.mp3) | _no time, no place to talk about the weather_

**Laura Marling** \- [My Manic And I](http://six-by-nine.org/lj/Laura Marling - My Manic And I.mp3) | _oh the gods that he believes never fail to amaze me_

**Midlake** \- [In The Ground](http://six-by-nine.org/lj/Midlake - In the Ground.mp3) | _two sons to follow him, both wrestled long, but younger wins_  
  
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End file.
